Academic policy advice in consensus-seeking countries: the cases of Belgium and Germany

Abstract

Research on policy-advisory systems worldwide has shown that historically dominant sources of advice traditionally located in-house to the government have been increasingly supplemented by other actors and outside knowledge. However, the vast majority of research has concentrated on the anglophone context. Yet, countries with a consensus-seeking, neo-corporatist tradition provide a special case in terms of policy advice and merit more scholarly attention. What counts as evidence in these countries is the expert rationality of institutional representatives. The position and role of academic research in consensus-based systems is unclear, and is the focus of this article. Can we observe commonalities across consensus-style countries, or do differences prevail? We investigate two typical consensus-seeking countries: Belgium and Germany. To examine the supply side of policy advice, the article reviews current evidence regarding their policy-advisory systems. For the demand side, we present insights from a survey among federal ministerial officials. We find common trends between the two cases but their nature and extent are idiosyncratic. In Belgium, the supply of and demand for academic policy advice is comparatively lower, while the German case exhibits more change in the advisory landscape and institutionalisation of the supply of and demand for academic research. Points for practitioners • Countries with a consensus-seeking, neo-corporatist tradition provide a special case in terms of policy advice. • The findings suggest that there are common trends but their nature and extent are idiosyncratic. • In Belgium, the supply of and demand for academic advice is comparatively lower. • Germany’s policy-advisory landscape exhibits more change and institutionalisation of the supply of and demand for academic research.

Tracing scientisation in the EU Commission’s expert group system

“…The diversification of the expert group structures that we observe ties in with the Commission's multi-pronged approach to the expert groups system and echoes similar findings on the pluralisation and hybridisation of national advisory systems (see e.g. Pattyn et al 2019;Veit, Husted, and Bach 2017).…”

Policy recommendations of international bureaucracies: the importance of country-specificity

“…Third, international bureaucracies are only one group of actors within policy advisory systems. Scholars working on policy advice have established, among other things, the importance of advice by academics, civil society and think tanks (Pattyn et al., 2019). More research is needed to understand how and with whom international bureaucracies compete for national actors’ attention.…”

“…Third, our findings speak to discussions on policy advisory systems within countries (Craft and Howlett, 2012; Halligan, 1995). The literature has mostly focused on national actors, and studies mostly focus on a small number of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (Howlett, 2019; Pattyn et al., 2019). Our global sample allows some inference as to how one group of actors’ policy advice is considered in more diverse contexts.…”

A Theoretical Perspective on the Roles of Political Scientists in Policy Advisory Systems

“…The work by Craft and Wilder (2017) on policy advisory networks within policy advisory systems is instructive to capture both differences between and within advisory systems. One example of this is variations of neo-corporatist advisory arrangements where civil society actors are prominent in advising government with or without the involvement of academics (Pattyn et al, 2019).…”